Andreessen Horowitz's Newest Partner: Crappy Software In Enterprise Won't Work Any More

Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen
Horowitz has been on a hiring spree
lately, and today it added Peter Levine as a venture partner
to help it invest in startups that focus on enterprise and
business computing.

Levine is a veteran of the enterprise world: he was at storage
and security provider Veritas (which was bought by Symantec for
more than $10 billion in 2005) and more recently has been an
executive XenSource, a virtualization company that was snapped up
by one of the industry leaders, Citrix, in 2007.

In a phone call, Levine said he agreed that enterprise computing
has kind of a stigma attached to it in the VC community -- sales
cycles are long, IT managers are tough sells, and big companies
like Microsoft and IBM have a strong hold which can make it hard
for startups to break through.

But he thinks that is starting to change as employees start to
wonder why their work systems are so painful when they have such
elegant technology at home.

"When you and I go to work and we use a computer to work, and
find that our work apps are completely onerous and the apps we
use at home are quite easy, we wonder why can't it be simpler,
easier, quicker, and less expensive?"

This trend -- consumerization -- is a dirty word in some IT shops
that would prefer to keep employees locked down on known secure
systems. But it's irreversible. "When someone goes to work now,
they bring a device they may own, an iPhone or iPad, and say to
the IT organization 'I need this thing to work with your
environment.'" If that person is an important exec, the IT
director won't say no.

Levine also thinks that cloud computing is going to shorten
enterprise sales cycles by making it easier for big companies to
try out new apps: "In the old days, I'd have to go as a company,
buy computer resources, buy servers, buy storage, and lash it all
together. It took a long time to stand up. Now if I need, I can
go to Amazon or Rackspace and buy some computer power nearly
instantaneously."

Other big areas of opportunity Levine sees in the enterprise
include:

Social networking. "I can certainly imagine a
day where task workers, enterprise workers no longer
communicate via email, but instead use some social vehicle that
looks a lot like consumer social networks we see today." He
points to Box.net, which
lets users share documents in an online space rather than
sending them back and forth as email attachments, as an
example.

Security. As employees bring their own devices
to work, IT departments are going to have to figure out how to
keep data from leaking out of the company.

Storage. Enterprises have gotten used to
paying much less for storage on public cloud services, and will
demand the same cost savings in on-premise solutions. "I see
storage certainly having a renaissance as well."

Levine will continue as VP of strategic development at Citrix,
and will keep teaching at MIT as well.